


Year of the Living Dead

by ivynights (incantatem)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2011-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-26 23:34:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incantatem/pseuds/ivynights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Really, it doesn’t matter that he’s living in suburbia; Sam’s down in the pit, so Dean’s down in the pit. It’s just a whole new kind of torture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Year of the Living Dead

**Author's Note:**

> -Takes place post 5.22 (Swan Song). Was written directly after the ep aired so it's by default an AU.
> 
> -Thanks to nitro26 for the beta!

**Sam**  
This is what happens on day one.

Arriving in Hell is a unique experience. Sam’s thrust into darkness and he feels motion, like he’s falling, like he’s sinking fast, though he’s not oriented enough to really sense direction until things go abruptly still.

He takes a couple of moments to assess the situation. He can feel Lucifer pounding away in his head, each pulse like a living heartbeat, which is ironic as Sam’s down here, so Sam’s dead inherently. The cage bars are invisible but he quickly realizes he can’t move beyond a few steps in any direction. Adam’s body is on the ground beside him and it shows no inhabitants of any kind.

A thrill shocks through his system and he looks up to see black smoke fly straight at him from every direction.

When the demons hit, it’s pain like none Sam’s ever imagined. He screams, he can’t help it, and the only word his mouth can shape is _Dean_. No matter how much he yells, the pain only magnifies until he feels something inside him _stretch_ and break and the feeling disappears.

Lucifer slides out of Sam’s skin and, even though he has no meatsuit, Sam can see his face clearly. His expression is positively malevolent and he gazes out at the dark surroundings with contempt. He turns his head back Sam’s way, gaze burning, and spits, “Welcome home.”

  
 **Dean**  
This is also what happens on day one.

Dean speeds down highway until he gets a motel room – two queens – and curls up on one of the beds. His body wracks with sobs until he falls asleep, exhausted.

When he wakes up, he showers, then sits, staring at the bed opposite his own.

He watches the space where his brother is supposed to be until he realizes that, if he doesn’t get on the road to Cicero, Indiana, right this very instant, he’s going to break his promise.

Dean barely remembers any of this. It’s just one long blur of agony.

  
 **Sam**  
Sam guesses the experience he’s having in Hell is quite different from both Dean’s and his father’s.

There’s pain and torture, lots of it, and that’s familiar territory, but Sam doesn’t think his other family members had the Devil prowling back and forth three feet from them while it was inflicted.

Furthermore, Hell’s in chaos. Lucifer may have returned home, but so have other demons bearing the news that their leader planned to wipe them all out once his takeover was complete. He doesn’t exactly get a friendly reception.

Demons are jockeying for power. Again.

Most of the time Sam doesn’t understand the chatter of the demons around him, but once in a while he recognizes a name. Meg’s gets tossed around a fair bit, though she’s still on the surface.

Another name he recognizes is his own. Because some of the demons - well, some of them back him.

When he jumped into the cage, dealing with demonic politics was the last thing on Sam's mind.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to contemplate an unwilling campaign for office for more than a few days before he finds himself standing in front of the Braeden’s house with no idea how he got there.

  
 **Dean**  
Though the ones leading up to it have been spent in a fog, day ten is actually painfully clear.

Dean’s not sure what he’s doing here or why Lisa’s letting him stay or how this is all supposed to fit together. There’s only ever been one place he’s fit and that place is currently in a cage deep underneath the earth. He should be handcuffed to his brother as usual, locked down in their cell, though the bars would be hellfire as opposed to normal prison steel. But that’s not an option at the moment.

He and Lisa haven’t kissed. He thinks she tried to, once, that night he got drunker than he meant too and couldn’t hold the tears back, but his head hadn’t been paying attention to the then and there.

He’s awake enough now that he reads her intention loud and clear, and he knows just how good it would feel to bury himself in something else for a while, but he can’t – no, literally, he _can’t._ It’s completely embarrassing except for the fact that he’s still too full of other feelings to hold on to the burn of shame.

  
 **Sam**  
Sam sees his brother sitting at a normal table with a woman and child, to a home-cooked meal, in a two-story house on a suburban street, in a quiet town, and makes a split-second decision with enormous consequences.

The decision’s instantaneous nature doesn’t imply it was easy. It’s the hardest decision he’s made in his life, as well as the most painful. But it also seemed to be the one with the clearest answer. He can’t screw things up for Dean. He can’t and he won’t. He just loves his brother too damn much to ever want to mess things up for him again.

  
 **Dean**  
So, Dean’s a civilian now. Who knew he’d get an early retirement? The supernatural world is his past and the dead should stay dead, that’s the lesson he’s supposed to take from his last thirty years, so he tries to block it all out.

It’s much easier said than done. Dean’s lizard brain is more finely tuned than the masses’, and it’s still base habit and instinct to locate the exits, to assess the escape routes, to be always on the lookout for the next threat.

He trains himself to ignore it.

He doesn’t put down lines of salt.

He tosses away the newspaper when the headlines scream about a string of murders only a few towns away, corpses drained and cops confused.

And when the streetlight outside the house sparks out dramatically, he steels himself and doesn’t go out the door and investigate that either.

Baby steps.

  
 **Sam**  
Sam’s powers aren’t fading away. In fact, they seem to be stronger than ever, although Sam feels more human than he ever did while drinking blood. He certainly doesn’t feel anymore _evil_ , something he’s been monitoring vigilantly. Sometimes, when his emotions run high, Sam screws up electrical systems or makes objects fly across the room, but he’s working on getting it under control.

He’s literally dead to the world – to his world, to Dean - so there doesn’t seem to be any point in trying to resist using them. It doesn’t feel like he has a choice anymore anyway; they’re a part of him and he employs them without thinking.

Sam throws himself into the hunt. No matter what he does, it’s impossible not to think of Dean, seems like that’s all he ever thinks of, but killing evil sons of bitches gives him purpose.

He doesn’t have Dean against his back but he’s aided by his powers. The hunts go smoothly, psychic abilities obliterating the creatures that put up more resistance than he can physically handle alone.

With Dean in Indiana and Bobby in South Dakota, Sam makes his way back and forth across the county in a slow curve, keeping to the coasts and the South. America may be a big place but the hunter community ain’t. He doesn’t broadcast his kills, just comes in, takes them out, and gets on the road again.

There are other places he avoids too. Southern Florida. Northern California. Thoughts of two separate separation experiences are just too much to handle at one time. But no matter where he goes, memories of life with or without Dean spill unbidden, across a thousand rest stops and road signs, following strings of electrical wires along the highways and black birds darting across the sky while the sun hits down on the top of his unobtrusive four-door.

One of the problems with never having had a geographically pinpointed home is that it sure makes it hard to runaway from it.

As the weeks go by, Sam finds himself slipping into more and more of his Broward County ways. He has to step back and remind himself that Dean is actually alive and well and there’s no reason for him to be sliding along the slope toward psycho.

This he can’t blame on any lingering demonic influence. This is all Sam.

Eventually, just telling himself Dean’s alive doesn’t suffice. He has to go see him again.

  
 **Dean**  
Dean wants a job at the local garage, but they’re not hiring at the moment, so he ends up working at a local hardware store for the interim. He held a similar gig when he was 16 and they were living in Alleghany, so he tries not to think about it too hard.

He tries not to think about anything too hard. He’s not sure whether he prefers the days working the floor or the days in the back on stock duty. The former are more draining, all his attention needed on dealing with the customers; the latter are more comfortable, it’s quieter back there, but it’s also more dangerous, too easy for his mind to wander into forbidden places.

Some of the guys he works with have a poker tournament going and he makes himself join it.

One day, all the lights burn out at work, leaving the building in a sudden, unexpected dark.

“What happened?” shouts Tom, working in the next aisle over.

“Power outage,” calls back Dean, “Building must have short-circuited. What else could it be?”

And that’s all there is to it.

  
 **Sam**  
Adrenaline rushes through Sam’s limbs, pulse skipping with every other beat.

He finds out where Dean’s working and slips in with a crowd. He sees Dean’s back down at the other end of an aisle, helping a customer as they discuss different types of screwdrivers. His brother, right there, right in the flesh in front of him.

Sam accidentally blows the power out.

That’s the first time.

  
 **Dean**  
Dean thinks about his mom a lot.

She did this. She gave up the life and became a civilian.

He’s always loved his mother, deeply, admired her for her beauty and for her heart. But he comes to respect her in a whole new way now. Knowing the true depth of evil in the world and turning around and trying to forget it, living the oblivious existence of the rest of society – it’s hard work. Mary’s past caught up with her eventually, but she gave it a valiant go.

When Ben stomps in complaining about his math homework, Dean thinks of himself at age four, sobbing to his mother over a scraped knee, and tries to look at life’s small-scale tragedies with an empathetic eye.

He realizes Mary must have had even more strength than he ever knew.

The few pictures that remain of the Winchester family throughout the years live in a tiny box in the Impala’s trunk. He takes out a small photo of Mary and keeps it in his wallet, as a reminder.

There’s a picture of Sam in there too, always has been, but he tries his hardest not to look at it.

  
 **Sam**  
Sam leaves Indiana and returns to his work. Though in some ways his glimpse of Dean has soothed his ache for his brother, in a deeper way it’s just wet his appetite and made it worse. His brother’s out there, alive and whole, and they’re apart, and it’s hard to remind himself just why this is necessary.

He dances around the word Ash used – _soulmates soulmates soulmates_ – and wonders if he’s doing the right thing.

He thinks of the expression on Dean’s face when Sam grabbed onto Michael and threw them both into oblivion and wonders if he’s doing the right thing.

He thinks about how he himself felt when he imagined his brother rotting away in Hell during that long, painful summer and wonders if he’s doing the right thing.

Even freaking _New Moon_ comes on TV and makes him wonder if he’s doing the right thing.

Few things have ever been simple in Sam’s life. Despite the complexities negotiating their relationship, at its core the love between him and his brother has always been the simplest thing. Rejection of it doesn’t seem like such a clear answer anymore.

  
 **Dean**  
By the end of the first month, Dean has settled into a routine. Get up, check whether he’s in the guest bedroom or in Lisa’s, get ready, go to work, Mondays are Ben’s soccer practice, Tuesdays Lisa works late at the studio, Wednesdays…

It’s normal. It’s apple pie and all American. It’s cliché and it’s the first time Dean’s found himself blending into the world around him, becoming one of the masses, not above the law, not separate from it all.

Things with Lisa are a little indefinable. Sometimes they sleep together and sometimes they kiss but it feels more like comfort than passion. Dean’s not sure what she’s expecting from him.

He kicks around a ball with Ben, makes him sandwiches and advises him on how to next expand his music collection. He’s not sure what Ben expects from him either.

Sometimes Dean’s not sure what he’s trying to do here at all.

He doesn’t wonder if Ben’s his kid anymore. It was always a doubt nagging in the back of his brain, but, as he gets older, Ben looks less like Dean and acts less like Dean, and he doesn’t think Lisa would lie to him about it. Not now.

Lisa’s kind of a free spirit. Sure, she holds a fairly normal life, but she doesn’t seem to feel pressured to fully conform. She’s impulsive and independent. Loves being a single mom. Has no apparent concern about taking in a suicidal man she barely knows. He appreciates what she’s doing for him more than he can express.

He could do without the patchouli scent that permeates the basement and the odd, chanting music she plays when she practices her yoga routines, but it’s better than he had any right to expect.

He thinks she might also have something going on with Mark, one of her managers at the studio, and that’s fine too.

It’s not like she’s the one who’s always on Dean’s mind.

This is the first time he’s ever stayed in one place long enough to learn the little everyday quirks of anyone other than his father and brother. Lisa’s terribly patient and kind but she has her less than perfect traits. Ben’s still a cool kid but he can be a real brat, especially when his adulation of Dean twists into a bit of resentment after Dean keeps taking up so much of his mother’s attention.

Dean finds it kind of hard to look at him ‘cause he always sees ten-year-old Sam.

It’s also kind of hard to be with Lisa because she’s not Sam either and it’s kind of hard to eat at a sit down table cause it’s not a diner booth and it’s kind of hard to ride along with them in a minivan to Ben’s soccer games and to sit through Desperate Housewives with Lisa and to go out to the neighborhood block party on the 4th – _should be fireworks in a field_ \- and it’s all just more than kind of hard.

It feels impossible but he presses on anyway.

  
 **Sam**  
Sam’s pulling off the interstate one day when Castiel appears in the seat beside him. Sam lets out something that can only be describe as a squawk and nearly slides into the next lane before he gets the car under control.

“Cas! What are you-? Wait, didn’t you _explode_?!”

“Sam Winchester,” intones Castiel, sounding more otherworldly than Sam remembers him last, “We need to talk.”

Cas wants him to go back to Dean. Let him know he’s alive and okay. Says he’s been keeping an eye on Dean from Heaven and he doesn’t think he’s coping well. Says Sam asked him to look after him, which Sam did, though Sam didn’t necessarily mean Cas should keep an eye on Dean from quite such a distance.

“I told you, it’s impossible for me to look after him. Only you can do that,” Cas says.

But Sam took a second visit to Cicero just last week, saw Dean kick a soccer ball around with Ben, saw him give Ben a high-five and then ruffle his hair, before bending down to pick up a beer. Saw Lisa watching the two of them from a window.

Sam wonders what she thought she was looking at and if it was the same thing Sam saw.

Dean’s with Lisa.

Cas doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

  
 **Dean**  
Dean moves out around the three-month mark.

He’s saved up enough money for the first month’s rent on a tiny studio apartment only a few miles from Lisa’s. Lisa protests, but not too strongly, and Ben doesn’t say a word, so Dean knows he’s relieved.

He still goes over for dinner more often than not, and he and Lisa are still sort of together in a very loose way, and it’s not what he knows Sammy hoped for, but it’s all he can manage at the moment.

Being on his own both makes things better and worse.

He falls into a few small indulgences. For one, he puts down a salt line. For another, the first night on his own, Dean brings in everything from the Impala’s trunk, intending to clean it all, doesn’t want the guns to rust even if they’re not in use, and he’s faced with Sam’s duffle.

He touches it last. It smells like his brother and it smells like home.

He finds the amulet inside it and cries.

Dean doesn’t really know whether he should classify the episode among the positives or negatives.

Definitely bad is how, now that no one’s watching him, he spends most of his weekends in bed, doing nothing but breathing. Forward momentum is hard, so hard, and sometimes staying stagnant is all that he can manage. At least it’s not going backward. Not back on his word.

  
 **Sam**  
Sam misses his brother like a constantly bleeding phantom limb. He doesn’t try to make himself stop thinking of him – if this is all he’ll ever have of Dean, then he’ll take what he can get.

Again, Sam finds himself slipping back into his mystery spot M.O.s. The bed is folded with scary precision. He cuts his tasteless food like he’s hacking at a vampire’s neck. He kills with an alarming lack of emotion.

It’s time to visit Dean again.

  
 **Dean**  
Bad is also the way how, when he’s too drunk or too tired, Dean lets himself think of Sam.

Not so bad are the memories from childhood. A nine-year-old Dean teaching Sam to read feels so very far away, so very pure and innocent, that it isn’t tainted. It doesn’t even feel real.

Worse are memories of them at older ages. Partners – the thrill of the hunt, the thrill of the road, the thrill of each other, ensconced in their own little world.

Definitely bad is when Dean’s far gone enough to imagine Sam there with him in the present moment. Sam coming back and their life picking up where it left off, albeit free from apocalyptic worry. Sam lying in bed beside him, drooling on the pillow, stealing his pickles off his plate at a diner, hogging the bathroom to deal with his overlong hair, forcing him to watch the History Channel, _Sam Sam Sam_.

In his blackest moments, Dean’s thoughts grow dark. He imagines them down in Hell together. The worst part is, Dean knows just how he’d get there too. He’s got enough experience with Crossroads Demons. And if no one was ready to take him right away, he thinks he’d drive down to Stull, dig himself a grave next to Sam’s, climb on in and empty the bullet into his brain there and then.

He also knows what he’d do when he got down there. This time around, the familiar weight of the instruments in his hands would be a comfort, not damnation. He’d cut a swath through the smoke and fire until he found his brother and then he and Sam would carve themselves out a little slice of damned paradise. Winchesterland. Soulmates stick together wherever they go.

If any angels felt like coming and getting them out, that’d be nice.

But if they didn’t, that’d be just fine too.

  
 **Sam**  
Lock picking’s always been one of Sam’s specialties. He breaks into Dean’s apartment while Dean’s at work. The evidence of his brother everywhere hits him hard. Dean’s scent on the bed, by the laundry, in the bathroom. Dean’s clothes, old and worn, familiar as ever. He slides his hand under the pillow the notes that there’s no knife on the bed.

He’s not naïve though. He doesn’t touch the cache of weapons he knows must be hidden somewhere on the premises.

He can’t resist taking a few small things with him. He knows Dean will notice they’re gone, but hopefully he’ll just chalk it up to an untrustworthy neighbor and won't read too much into it.

Maybe what Sam’s doing is a little bit creepy, but fuck it, Dean’s things look and feel and smell like _home_.

His head’s still so caught up in Dean-clouds that he almost plows through a stop sign on his way out, slams on the breaks just in time, and the driver of the car he nearly hits rolls down his window and yells, “You motherfuckin’ _jerk_!”

Sam looks over at the seat next to him, currently occupied by one Dean-sized gray t-shirt.

 _Hey, that’s my line_ , he thinks and grins.

Okay, maybe things really have gotten a bit creepy.

  
 **Dean**  
A couple of his things go missing, one of his favorite t-shirts and, oddly, his half-used bottle of shampoo, but Dean doesn’t suspect a klepto ghost.

His apartment’s not exactly in a ritzy area of town and some of his neighbors are more than a little strange and desperate enough to break in. He guesses he’s just lucky he doesn’t have anything much of external value.

And luckier still that they didn’t find the spot under his bed where he’s keeping the contents of the Impala’s trunk locked away beneath the floorboards.  

He shrugs it off. Whatever. Being the victim rather than the perpetrator of petty crime is just another winning aspect of his new-found life of normalcy.

  
 **Sam**  
Sam runs into more than his fair share of demons while on the hunt. All of them like to talk a lot and sometimes he lets them before he takes them out with his mind. He’s kind of interested in tracking what’s been going on Down Under since his departure. Doesn’t want any nasty surprises coming to catch him or Dean off guard. So he lets them run their mouths some.

If a demon so much as dares mention his brother, he or she’s gone in a flash.

All the demons know Sam got out of Hell. He wonders what they’re telling the other hunters they come across. The Roadhouse may have been blown to bits long ago, but there are still other hunter hotspots. And there are still people with connections across the community. Like Bobby.

It’s a concern that idles in the back of Sam’s mind, but there’s nothing he can do about it, so he just obliterates as many of Hell’s residents as he can find and prays the ones he doesn’t get to are viewed as liars.

  
 **Dean**  
Around the six-month mark, Dean gets a call from Bobby.

“Hey, boy,” says Bobby and when he hears the familiar gruff tone, Dean has to sit down before he can continue. It’s like his past is rushing back all at once, Bobby’s voice confirming that the world outside this tiny suburban life wasn’t just a dream.

Bobby’s sorry to bother him - though Dean doesn't thinks he sound all that sorry to be talking to Dean again, really - but he needs a favor.

Bobby explains that Crowley’s still got his soul and Dean’s the person he knows with the most experience with Crossroads Demons and he’s looking for a little advice.

Dean blinks. He forgot. He _forgot_. How could he-?

Of course he has to help.

Bobby drives down to Cicero and they do their research holed up in a private room at the library and they take Bobby's car on the hunt because too familiar terrain – especially since they’re dealing with sold souls – is just too much to handle. Too easy to slip onto promise-breaking ground. Dean doesn’t say this but Bobby gets it anyway.

Finding Crowley isn’t as hard as they feared, the demon reveling in the absence of apocalyptic threat, leaving a rather conspicuous trail of broken bodies in his stead. It helps that he isn’t unwilling to be found by them either.

When they’re face to face, Crowley concedes that demons are bound to deals too and he returns Bobby’s soul with minimal fanfare. Says he’d just been waiting for them to come collecting. His smile’s a little slipperier than Dean remembers it, now that they’ve no need to be on the same side any longer, but his word is still true.

But before Crowley relinquishes his hold over Bobby, he talks a lot, always impressed with his own wit, and Dean hears things he’d rather not.

Dean is an irresistible playground for demons. They're too perceptive by half and Dean knows he’s always been an easy target for them – every demon all too familiar with his life story to begin with and, much as he tries to hide it, Dean wears his bleeding heart on his sleeve. He’s an especially easy target at the moment. With Sam gone, the demons have more material to work with than they ever have before.

Crowley pierces through him all too sharply and he doesn’t need a hidden tracking device to know what hasn’t been going on inside the Impala and what has been going on inside Dean.

He makes some jab about Dean seeing his brother again sooner than he thinks, yeah, haha, all Winchesters doomed to Hell sooner or later, and the thought probably should not feel like a comfort to Dean but he’s still fucked up enough that it does.

Bobby watches the interchange with oddly sharp eyes, like he’s on the brink of a realization, but he doesn’t say anything to Dean, not as they walk out, not in the car, not as he drops Dean back off at his apartment.

“I’ll call again sooner,” Bobby says and they hug and that’s that.

  
 **Sam**  
Cas shows up again, parroting the same message as before.

“Why won’t you approach him, Sam?”

“Don’t you see he’s got a normal life? The perfect set up, finally. I can’t screw that up for him! I don’t want to screw up his life again, ever.”

“I don’t think he’s living quite so happily as you wish.”

Investigation is as good an excuse as any to check back in with his brother.

  
 **Dean**  
One time Men in Tights comes on tv and up shows the Sheriff of Rottingham and Dean wonders where Cas is and how the Heaven gig is going. Dean still gets too angry whenever he thinks about God so he throws the remote against the wall, then picks it back up and changes the channel.

The next channel is showing an episode of Buffy and, haha, high school is Hell, and the channel after that is playing The Stepford Wives and, haha, suburbia is Hell, and the channel after that is playing Hellraiser and, no, Hell is Hell.

Really, it doesn’t matter that he’s living in suburbia; Sam’s down in the pit so Dean’s down in the pit. It’s just a whole new kind of torture.

  
 **Sam**  
Sam goes back to Cicero. Really tries to look at his brother this time. He observes the rings around Dean's sunken eyes and is troubled by how he seems to be stopping by Lisa’s with less and less frequency.

So it’s taking longer than he hoped for things to fall into place. Doesn’t mean they’re not going to.

Maybe things will work out.

Cas might have a point; Sam tries to ignore it.

  
 **Dean**  
Lisa tells him she’s officially dating Mark and Dean has a brief panic attack because he’s gone seriously wrong somewhere along the line, this is so not the trajectory Sam drew out for him.

But they’ve got to be Lisa's and Ben’s wishes just as much as Sam’s. (Dean’s own wishes are impossible.)

With Lisa, men come and go like the tide, so Dean’s doesn’t mind sticking out the wait. He thinks he could love her, in a way, and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

In the meantime, he sincerely wishes them the best. And he still goes over for dinner once in a while.

He feels kind of like an asshole. Maybe he and Lisa would just be better off as friends.

  
 **Sam**  
Cas shows up a third time.

“This is the last time I'll appeal to you, Sam. Again, I urge you to approach your brother.”

“No! Bad things happen when we’re together. I don’t want to risk anymore near apocalypses and neither would he.”

“You do realize that the power of you and your brother’s love for each other saved the entire world, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but-“

“Because looking at it the way you seem to be doing is a highly illogical approach.”

“I’m doing it because I’m protecting him! Because I’m _keeping him alive_!” Sam shouts, frustration too high to keep hidden.

Castiel regards him silently for a long moment.

“Or maybe you’re just killing him slowly,” he says, and vanishes.

  
 **Dean**  
After they get his soul back, Bobby calls once every few weeks, just a quick check-in to touch base. They don’t say much – there’s nothing much they _can_ say without heading into perilous territory – but it gives Dean affirmation that the rest of his life existed somewhere outside of his own head and it gives Bobby affirmation that Dean’s still living and breathing, so they make it routine.

Every once in a while it seems like Bobby’s about to say something more. He’ll take a deep breath and stutter-start a sentence like, “Dean, I, uh, I heard something-“ but then he’ll cut himself off. He sounds hesitant, unsure, and Dean tells himself he doesn’t want to know each time, probably it’s just about some case, a striga in Memphis or a witch coven in Missoula, and doesn’t push for details.

Maybe Bobby’s waiting for Dean to make the first move. But he can’t. He can’t.

  
 **Sam**  
Cas’ last words haunt Sam constantly. He thinks about them as he reorganizes his already precisely ordered weapons collection, he thinks about them while he puts a bullet through a werewolf’s hide, he thinks about them while he incinerates a grave full of violent remains.

Dean is so ever present in his mind that Sam kind of forgets to actually go see him for a couple of months.

Once he remembers though, the thought won’t rest – he’s halfway to a hunt in San Antonio when he u-turns and heads straight up to Indiana. The desire to see Dean devours all else and Sam’s mind races ahead of his body.

When he gets to Dean’s apartment building, he nearly collides right into his brother, excitement making him hasty and sloppy. He ducks around a corner and follows Dean with his eyes as Dean makes his way out of the lobby. Dean’s cell phone rings right before he gets to the doors, and he stops to answer it.

“Bobby,” Dean says, “Good to hear from you again,” and Sam freezes.

This is not good. So not good. What if Dean’s planning – _something_?

Sam sticks around longer than he’s dared to before, all but stalks Dean over the course of the next few days, trying to ascertain whether his brother is in danger of doing anything monumentally stupid.

He finds no evidence of reckless plans and drives away with guiltily mixed emotions.

Part of him wishes he’d found them; it would have been an excuse to reveal himself to Dean that he couldn’t ignore.

  
 **Dean**  
Dean wears Sam like a second skin.

At some point, he decides to cease his moratorium on memories. He lets himself think of Sam whenever his mind drifts – doesn’t need alcohol or lack of sleep as an excuse. The dam breaks and memories of his brother and their collective life together rush over him in waves. He lets them slip under his skin and take up permanent residence just under the surface, until Sam’s alive as much as Dean is and they’re living out this counterfeit of the American Dream together.

His brain runs a steady stream of commentary to his brother, jokes only Sam get, references only Sam would understand.

Sometimes Dean swears he feels eyes burning on the back of his head, like someone's watching him, intensely, but he doesn’t let himself turn around and check. It’s leftover hunter paranoia, a lifetime of hyperawareness for any hidden form of sentient life unwilling to fade.

It prickles and is kind of annoying but it also reminds Dean who he is. Grounds him in the strangest way, even while it undermines his attempts at normalcy.

No matter what, Dean realizes, one can’t shake his past. Maybe the dead should stay dead but that don’t mean they do.

  
 **Sam**  
Sam thinks he should probably try to stop these visits with his brother cold-turkey - what is he going to do, creep around Dean his whole life? - but he just can’t let go. Not yet.

Doubts peck away at him like vultures. During the near run-in at the apartment, he’d gotten his first glance of Dean’s face up at close range in almost a year and was alarmed at what he saw there. He seemed functioning. He didn’t really look alive.

Maybe he could… if Dean’s really not happy… _no_. Dean’s _keeping his promise_. He can’t mess it up. But the internal debate rages and the balance seems to be tipping.

Now Sam can’t stop thinking about revealing his presence to his brother.

Dean finding out he’s still alive is supposed to be a terror but it hits more like a fantasy.

  
 **Dean**  
The day Dean decides to go back on the road is particularly clear.

He’s not intending a return to the life. Normal people go on vacation, right? Go away to mark significant dates in their lives? True, usually the reason for travel is to mark a happy occasion, but, no matter what, Dean isn’t _normal people_.

“I’m going on a road trip,” he tells Lisa, “I’ll be home in a few days,” and the words leave an ironic taste in his mouth, another one of those things that only Sam would get.

But he swallows the taste away, puts on some Led Zepp, loud, and pulls out onto the highway, the open road an old haunting ground he hasn’t dared touch in a very long time.

And if the spirit of a transient life wasn’t enough, every time he’s in the Impala, his brother’s ghost rides shotgun. He embraces it now. He always wanted to take Sam along for this particular ride.

He’s got over 1,700 miles to cover and only a couple of days to do it. Dean directs the car Southwest and sets out on his way.

 **Sam**  
This is what happens on the one-year anniversary of Sam’s death.

Sam’s in Arizona - two-thirds of the way across his normal loop, east coast to west, curving down South - when the date’s significance hits him. The need to feel close to Dean shoots straight through him. He’s too far from Cicero to make it there within the day, so another thought leaps to mind. The idea is an impulse he doesn’t try to fight.

As he walks out of the visitor parking lot, he hears a familiar engine rumble behind him. He shakes his head at himself with a little wry smile, _yeah right, wishful thinking_ , and doesn’t turn around.

The required shuttle buses read “Grand Canyon” in large, blue-green letters. He hops on one and practices keeping his powers under control; he knows his emotions are spinning haywire and doesn’t want the machine to break down so close to his destination.

He gets off the bus and walks over to the canyon edge. The sight is just as stunning as Dean always said it would be. Standing apart from the crowd, gazing out across the red, orange, yellow ravine, thinking about chasms that seem impossible to cross, Sam misses Dean with fierce desperation. He wasn’t meant to come here alone.

When he’s drunk his fill of the scenery, he turns around and is rooted to the spot.

His brother is standing only a few feet away staring straight at him.

Sam’s too shocked to try to hide or deny or run. And he really doesn’t want to. Running into his brother at the Grand Canyon is completely accidental but it feels like the one destiny Sam’s finally eager to embrace.

“ _Dean_ ,” he says, the word gutted out of him.

He takes a step forward and pauses again. Dean’s eyes are huge and green and Sam’s not sure how much he’s comprehending.

“Dean?”

Dean’s voice comes out in a broken croak. “Sam?”

“Yeah, it’s- it’s me.” He takes a couple steps forward. He wants to keep his brother in his vision desperately but tears are already blurring his sight and he can feel a stupid smile break over his face.

“How? You- you’re alive?”

Sam’s voice cracks when he speaks. “Yeah. I’m alive.”

“When-“

“All this time. I got out just… just a couple days after I fell in.”

That thought seems to finally permeate Dean’s brain.

“You _what_.”

Dean closes the gap between them, and Sam sees his fist is clenched, knuckles white. He braces himself for the impact but it never comes. Dean snags Sam’s shirt in his fist and Sam has quick, manic thoughts of _oh, shit, he’s going to push me in_ and _wouldn’t death by Grand Canyon after all this be just our fucking luck_ but Dean just hauls him away from the canyon edge and further away from the civilian masses.

“What the _fuck_ , Sam.” Dean sounds livid and tourists are staring at them but Sam could not care less.

Sam tries to explain, although now it just sounds so silly, so stupid, now that he fully remembers and feels them together, but he does his best to spell it out for Dean anyway.

“Where the hell have you been? Why didn’t you come to me?!”

“Hunting. All over. I know. I know. Just- Dean, that was your one shot. _Is_ your one shot, you can still go back to Li-“

Dean’s voice has gone dangerously flat, “It’s not like this was my version of _fucking running away to Stanford, Sam_. You think I wanted any of this? You think I find out you’ve been alive this entire time and you think I’m going to turn around and leave you again? You honestly think I _want_ to do that?”

“Well.” Sam’s breath spills out in a sort of helpless laugh. “Is it terrible of me to say I hope you don’t?”

Dean’s jaw unclenches at that.

Dean seems completely overwhelmed, just as Sam feels, and Sam ignores the possibility of violence and reaches out past Dean's fists to pulls his brother into an seamlessly tight hug. He feels Dean’s tense lines dissipate and then Dean’s hands reach out and pull Sam even closer. Sam’s crying full out and he can feel Dean collapse against him, snot and saliva soaking Sam's shirt and he doesn't care because Dean is under his arms, warm and whole, and Dean's gasping shaking breaths on to his neck and mouthing at his collarbone and this is all he’s ever wanted.

When Dean finally pulls back a little, tear tracks line his eyes, color exhilaratingly bright, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, making the canyon’s rainbow landscape pale in comparison, and Sam’s at a loss for words for a moment because the last time he saw Dean, he looked like the living dead, but now he looks wonderfully, vividly _alive_.

“Don’t you ever – don’t you _ever_ \- _never again, Sam_ -”

“I know. I'm sorry. I won’t.” And he means it.

And then their lips find each other’s in wild, desperate kisses, more like bites, drawing shared blood. There’s too much spit and teeth and not enough technique but they can’t slow down. It's skin hunger and passion. They kiss until their lips feel raw and bruised and they need to break for air. Dean manages to make some crack about their audience getting more sights than they paid for and Sam laughs hysterically and pulls his brother back in close again.

Being back with his brother feels like inevitability. Like they were always gonna end up here, side by side, heart beats in union. Be it through angels, or demons, or other people, or, it seems, fate or coincidence - this is where they were meant to return.

Somehow, they make their way over to the Impala. Sam’s sure Dean wants to drive, and they’re both having trouble taking their eyes off the other, but Dean’s worse for the wear as he hasn’t been sneakily watching his brother all year, so Sam slips into the driver’s seat and pulls them out onto the highway, motel-bound.

The sun sinks as they drive and when night unfolds, the stars bloom across the sky in an infinite bounty. An eternity of stars under a desert night is a gorgeous thing to behold, on par with the Grand Canyon, just under the sight of his brother in the seat beside him, and Sam makes a mental note to drive them out here again tomorrow night. They’ll watch the sky as the Impala’s hood cools beneath them and they remain solid and warm at each other’s sides.

They pull over and grab a room – two queens, though Sam knows they’ll only be needing one tonight – and stumble through the doorway.

Both of Sam’s hands are on Dean and both of Dean’s hands are on Sam so it’s kind of surprising when the door slams shut behind them. Dean looks over and Sam freezes under Dean’s fingers. Dean turns his head back to Sam. Sam feels his heart beat even faster but he meets Dean’s eyes full on.

“I-um. I can’t stop my abilities anymore. They’re just a part of me now. Is that- is that okay with you?”

Dean leans forward to get at Sam’s mouth again.

“It’s you, Sammy, it’s always gonna be okay with me.”

Dean paws at Sam’s chest, pushing him toward the bed. Sam sits down and catches Dean's hands for a moment before linking them around his neck and using his own to pull Dean flush against him, practically in his lap.

They leave the sheets _filthy_ , and that’s gotta be the only dirty thing about the moment ‘cause every time Sam looks at his brother all he can do is feel wonderfully pure and whole. He wants to bury himself inside his brother’s skin and never feel alone again.

His tongue’s in Dean’s mouth and Dean’s fingers card through Sam’s hair and Sam’s cock slides home inside Dean and Dean tucks himself into Sam to sleep and, no matter how right-wrong it felt being possessed by the devil, Lucifer was mistaken about at least one thing. This is where Sam feels in place.

Dean burrows his face closer into Sam’s skin and Sam knows this is where they _both_ belong.

Sam’s lips are right next to Dean’s ear, perfect for whispering sappy but necessary reassurances that they’ll both deny later. There’s a strange peace between them; in the face of too much to say, focus has boiled down to only the very few essentials. _You’re here and I’m here and I love you and you love me._

He tells Dean, “We’re getting a happy ending."

And he thinks, _I promise_.

  
end.

**Author's Note:**

> <3 Feedback very much appreciated here or at my LJ: ivynights.livejournal.com/26168.html


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